8th March 2004 07:45 am.
He was drowning in his own misery and anxiety because of his terrible performance in the English paper the previous day. 65 was something he thought was a good score. He wasn’t terrible in English as a spoken language though as reading news during the morning assembly was a tradition to him. Now that all the good days have passed, he had to put all that nostalgia and sorrow behind and get ready for his favorite exam ever.
Mathematics, the only language I know through which God communicated with his children and also the only language in which the aliens could communicate with Jodie Foster in that dreadful movie. Oh that movie sucked man. Seriously I considered killing someone after that…
Wait! I am going off topic. Where was I?
*scrolls up* *scrolls down* *regains train of thought*
In front of him sat a girl about 4 feet 4 inches tall. She was quite slim considering the other people in the classroom, weighing about 40 kgs, had straight black hair which was combed properly and let down onto her white and green school uniform like a wedding gown let down on the church carpet. Unable to hold my curiosity I whispered to him in a voice so low that only he could hear.
“Dude, don’t you think that her hair looks ironically like a black wedding dress on a white carpet?”
“All I can see is one huge maintenance problem. I wonder how she has so much time to put up with her hair like that. That too with the board exams and all. She must be one dumb woman.” He calmly tossed away any of my plans of getting them to talk to each other.
“Hey don’t take it out on me for screwing up your last exam man. But relax! It’s a 2.5 hour Mathematics exam today. And you are going to ace it in an hour and a half. So enjoy yourself man,” replied I, cursing his stupidity in neglecting the fact that her mother could have made her hair whilst she was studying.
“All right everyone! Please put your books outside. The exam is going to start in 5 minutes and absolutely NO CHEATING!” said an authoritative lady from the front.
I knew that the lady was just a figurehead of authority. She couldn’t enforce any rules she wanted to. It was the tenth class exams for crying out loud. It was an exam in Warangal. Everybody cheats. Even the teachers cheat. It was an exam in which even the dumbest person of the planet could get above 60% marks.
But He wasn’t thinking. As soon as the exam started, he pounced onto the answer sheet the way a hungry African kid pounces onto a newly cooked burger made by an imperialist entrepreneur creating a perfect analogy of enslavement to consumerism and eventually taking over the diamond mines in his town.
Meanwhile the girl in front of him looks at the paper reads it carefully, smiles, turns back to and quietly whispers to him, “BEST OF LUCK!” preserving the smile throughout the 3 words.
The douchebag doesn’t even bother to give her a reply. Meanwhile I, who initially thought of sleeping while he answers all the questions in an hour and hands them over to me for review, am truly shocked at the occurrence of that particular event. I know this guy. I’ve known him too long to like him anymore. I have never seen a girl talking to him this way. Yes! He was sitting right behind her for the past 5 days without a word being spoken and maybe she was trying to prevent the perpetua of awkward silence. But I truly knew that she was NOT!
Through those few seconds, I had a glimpse of her face. She had a reddish white complexion, freckled cheeks, which added to her radiant smile. Her perfectly symmetrical eyebrows gathered my attention as though drawn by the creator using a simple 3rd degree curves. I cannot describe her lips as she was talking all the few moments she looked toward him because of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle prevents me from accurately describing them. As I gazed upon her eyes, they gazed onto him, brown and active as if she had woken up from a very good sleep and dilating with love as if she was woken up from a very long sleep through the kiss of true love!
He wouldn’t dare look at her as he was having fun of his own. Pondering over the futility of the Indian Education System as each question fails to stump him as if a hung over Homer Simpson trying to stump Michael Bevan. He turns to me and says, “Those idiots make a joke out of Mathematics. Now everyone will get 100 out of 100.”
“The only idiot here is YOU.” I murmur looking at all the neighboring kids who casually exchange answer sheets as politicians exchange insults.
An hour and a half passes as he finishes his first part of the paper and hands me over for review. He then lifts up his head to only to be shocked to find her staring into his answer sheet. Out of fury controlled by diplomacy he says, “If all you wanted was the answers, you could have just asked me.”
“I don’t need your answers. I just finished my exam 10 minutes ago. I was just too bored to do anything so was just looking around.” She replies casually with the same smile she had before.
“Well I finished mine 15 minutes ago. I was just rechecking my answers.” He replies showing no signs of jealousy.
Her glittering eyes blink for the first time that I know. She pauses for a moment just enough for me to watch her lips. She then replies in a disappointed tone,"Oh in that case, you should know by now that your 5th answer in the 3rd section is wrong.” And she turns toward the front her hair banging swiftly upon her dress.
He doesn’t hesitate. He flicks the paper from me as I was trying to remember her lips and starts checking them. And to our surprise, it was WRONG indeed.
